EDT (Extended Data type)

 

Extended Data Types (EDTs)

Extended data types (EDTs) are user-defined types, based on the primitive data types Boolean, integer, real, string, and date, and the composite type container. You can also base EDTs on other EDTs. 

This feature is not implemented as a language construct. EDTs are defined in the Application explorer (AOT). 

An EDT is a primitive data type or container with a supplementary name and some additional properties. For example, you could create a new EDT called Name and base it on a string. Thereafter you can use the new EDT in variable and field declarations in the development environment. 

Benefits of EDTs

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The benefits of EDTs are as follows: 

• Code is easier to read because variables have a meaningful data type. For example, Name instead of string. 

• The properties you set for an EDT are used by all instances of that type, which reduces work and promotes consistency. For example, account numbers (AccountNum data type) have the same properties throughout the system. 

• You can create hierarchies of EDTs, inheriting the properties that are appropriate from the parent and changing the other properties. For example, the ItemCode data type is used as the basis for the MarkupItemCode and PriceDiscItemCode data types.